Niantic
More evidence has appeared for the appearance of generation three Pokemon in Pokemon Go.
The picture above with gen three Pokemon Sableye and Duskull has been spotted on the iOS App Store, according to Eurogamer.
The picture also contains a special version of Pikachu wearing a witch’s hat, presumably available only during a Halloween event later this month. This is similar to the Ash Hat Pikachu available last July to celebrate the one year anniversary of the game.
Pokemon Go Hub discovered via datamine that the gen three Pokemon have almost all of the required files necessary for their implementation in the game. This includes audio files as well as a new Badge entry added in reference to the Gen three Pokedex entries. The only thing missing are new moves and abilities. They also discovered a new loading screen for Halloween 2017 which features ghost type Pokemon from gen three. They also found code referencing Halloween music played during nighttime as well as huge chunks of code changed for bug fixes and new debuggine and tracing tools.
Gen three Pokemon (the ones from Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald) were first discovered in a datamine of the game last August. All that was found at that point was a list of the names for all 135 Pokemon from the generation were found in the game’s code as well as a list of 73 new candy families.
Niantic CEO John Hanke recently told Taiwanese magazine Business Weekly that “there is a lot of Pokemon that have not yet been launched,” as reported by Sunday Express.
“So I think the next secret weapon will be the launch of the next Pokemon generation,” Hanke continues. “I hope the players will soon see them.”
Gen two Pokemon were added to the game on February 16, 2017 and the existence of them was found by Pokemon Go Hub three months before.
The Pokemon Company teased the arrival of a new Halloween event for Pokemon Go earlier in October, though it still has yet to be officially confirmed. Many believed the phrasing of the article suggested that brand new Pokemon were coming to the game during the event – possibly gen three Pokemon.
Last year’s Halloween event increased the spawn rate for “spooky” Pokemon and also granted players extra candy for catching, transferring, and hatching Pokemon, so we can expect these effects to return for this year’s event. The event also lasted from October 26, 2016 to November 1, 2016, so we also expect a similar time frame.